Online education - where is the commitment to equity and access?
Our VC has proudly announced that our university is the first Australian institution to join Coursera. Amid all the organisational gloating and boasting, I feel like I'm the awkward kid in the corner ("Please, miss, but why?"). Why is it so great that our university (which is constantly self-promoting - at least internally - as "Australia's best") has joined a for-profit education company?
As I see it, the anxiety generated among university leaders by the rise of social media and the internet generally, as potential disruptors of the traditional educational role of the university, is now playing out in a very public way. Frankly, vice-chancellors are flailing about. They don't know what to do about the internet and education, but they know they have to do something - anything! Whatever they do might be wrong, but for whatever reason (hello, YouTube?), the managerial consensus seems to be that some kind of tipping point has been reached, and that the risks of non-action are now greater than the alternative.
However, action is not the same as coherent action or considered action, and to me this is particularly evident in the apparent rush amid universities to try and leverage "free" or quasi-free educational initiatives for potential future profit. For one thing, for-profit online education is a highly specialised game, and it's going to be difficult for universities who go there, as they inevitably will, to succeed (many have already started, with mixed success).
More importantly, I'm very concerned, even worried, about the lack of commitment to open and free education that I'm seeing in the Australian HE landscape today. I can't help feeling that in jumping on the Coursera bandwagon, my own institution lost a real opportunity to lead in contributing to the social good. It's now more than TEN YEARS since the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations made the bold gesture of funding MIT's OpenCourseWare. As of now, that philanthropic vision and generosity is unmatched. It has nevertheless inspired a plethora of interesting not-for-profits working in similar online education spaces - some of which have grown from crowd-sourced projects.
The European Commission recently launched a consultation on Opening Up Education. As the consultation's website states: "Open access to education resources offers an unprecedented opportunity to enhance both excellence and equity in education." In its pursuit of opportunities in online education, the University of Melbourne should show comparable vision in committing to this vision of equity, as it has already committed to a vision of excellence.
As I see it, the anxiety generated among university leaders by the rise of social media and the internet generally, as potential disruptors of the traditional educational role of the university, is now playing out in a very public way. Frankly, vice-chancellors are flailing about. They don't know what to do about the internet and education, but they know they have to do something - anything! Whatever they do might be wrong, but for whatever reason (hello, YouTube?), the managerial consensus seems to be that some kind of tipping point has been reached, and that the risks of non-action are now greater than the alternative.
However, action is not the same as coherent action or considered action, and to me this is particularly evident in the apparent rush amid universities to try and leverage "free" or quasi-free educational initiatives for potential future profit. For one thing, for-profit online education is a highly specialised game, and it's going to be difficult for universities who go there, as they inevitably will, to succeed (many have already started, with mixed success).
More importantly, I'm very concerned, even worried, about the lack of commitment to open and free education that I'm seeing in the Australian HE landscape today. I can't help feeling that in jumping on the Coursera bandwagon, my own institution lost a real opportunity to lead in contributing to the social good. It's now more than TEN YEARS since the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations made the bold gesture of funding MIT's OpenCourseWare. As of now, that philanthropic vision and generosity is unmatched. It has nevertheless inspired a plethora of interesting not-for-profits working in similar online education spaces - some of which have grown from crowd-sourced projects.
The European Commission recently launched a consultation on Opening Up Education. As the consultation's website states: "Open access to education resources offers an unprecedented opportunity to enhance both excellence and equity in education." In its pursuit of opportunities in online education, the University of Melbourne should show comparable vision in committing to this vision of equity, as it has already committed to a vision of excellence.